


For the Static King.

by metu



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Introspection, complete disregard of what happens in canon, general feelings of love, gratuitous use of rhetorical figures and musical metaphors, noah czerny's funky and fresh adventures, that's about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 08:37:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20739362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metu/pseuds/metu
Summary: The uncomplicated and monosyllabic question of “why”, suddenly opens the gates for philosophical rebuttals that have nothing to do with his current situation.In which Noah ponders over the symphonic structure of his existence.





	For the Static King.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't want to be too verbose in these, since I already rambled quite a lot. I just wanted to say that English is not my first language and even though I like to pretend I'm as fluent as a native speaker I'd gladly appreciate it if you could forgive my own hubris and be so kind to make me aware of either typos or downright grammatical abominations. Thank you and enjoy :-)

**Overture.**

A simple and clean, well comprehensible inquiry would often require a more articulated answer, effort is frequently needed for, sometimes, nothing to be accomplished in the end. As one grows older, they realise that not all questions have answers, and that not all answers must need a question to be asked in the first place. So, the uncomplicated and monosyllabic question of “why”, suddenly opens the gates for philosophical rebuttals that have nothing to do with his current situation.  


****

**Requiem.**

_It feels like I'm in a salad spinner, _thinks Noah Czerny, who's not exactly growing older, and whose conception of honest questions and truthful answers has slipped past him way before he died. 

That's what happens when your parents are rich and distant and the only, apparent, true friend you've managed to make happens to be completely crazy, and a murderer, too, he figures.

The point is: he's been living, or at least pretended to be, while he fluctuated between a somewhat peaceful state of being and the other, more poignant, more real, more _him_. And while this game of lying by omission was amusing, he came to the conclusion that if all of his friends have a keen sense of disbelief, they are also as oblivious as a blind, deaf old dog.

It was fun, till it lasted, they were joking and they treated him like he was still the young teenager who likes to skate and makes bad decision for himself, now he feels like a humid carbon copy of what he used to be, Gansey talks to him in a sullen, subdued voice, like he's a spooked horse. He hates it, so much Noah thinks it might make him hate Gansey, too.

Ronan, on the other hand, doesn't treat him any different: his words are still harsh, his abrasiveness not dulled by the fact that one of his best friends – Noah likes to refer to himself as that, as a friend – is a ghost; then again, it might have to do with the fact that Ronan is nothing but the most honest and rude person he's ever known – which is to say a lot, considering that he went to a private-boys-only school –, their interactions feel genuine all the same, and the prudent thoughtlessness of Ronan's adventures has been dimmed thanks to the new, and exciting discovery of _no, I can't die again, Ronan._

Regarding Adam and Blue, well, they're too preoccupied with tiptoeing around each other, testing the waters without trying to drown in the easy lull of teenage infatuations, to even attempt to act in a different way. Or, at least, that's what it looked like; Blue sometimes looks concerned, even though, with her whole family history, one would guess she'd be used to the thought of ghosts and the like.

There's an overall sense of gloominess that covers like a thin sheet everything he does, everywhere he goes respectful silence follows, almost as if he's not just one single dead person, but the whole graveyard. His decaying spirit blocks his perception of the world, the camera lenses just a little too dusty, not enough focused to make him discern what's going on clearly, but leaving with an eerie sense of understanding that doesn't make him feel entirely left out. He hates this, still.

He thought he hated a lot of things when he was alive: his parents for no specific reason except being a rebellious teenager, most of his classmates and school, dimly lit places, horror movies, the pungent smell of the earth in autumn. Nothing ever compares to the hatred he feels towards being a living dead, not enough one or the other, stuck in between two different planes of existence that seem to reject him both at the same time. Noah's never been one for resigned acceptance of his condition, but he finds that his faith is becoming his downfall, too. What will he do, now that he knows what's behind the veil, where does he feature in God's grand plan? He closes his eyes, just as Gansey and – what he assumes is – Ronan close the door to Monmouth Manufacturing, gently like they're the ones death is following.

Noah feels his grasp on reality dim, the candlelit sunset finally making space for the hazy and threadbare dusk. The last thing he hears is Ronan calling out his surname, making him flicker to light once again, but it's short-lived and he dissolves just as the boy opens the door to his room, to find nothing but dust and a bed. Empty, just like his coffin.  


****

**Tema e Variazioni.**

After being buried, and then buried again, his form is more distinct, less petrol station bathroom light bulb and more night table lamp. 

His friends started acting more like themselves each and passing day, but something remained off. In hindsight, Noah thinks, that's what being dead does to you. Gansey is still searching for his king, Ronan is still keeping secrets, Adam and Blue still tiptoeing around each other, with the heavy presence of a curse and the heavier one of Gansey, who is now somewhat of a threat to Adam, whose jealousy is no grander than his pride.

Being a ghost, apparently, didn't excuse him from witnessing any of that high school drama. He laughs, because his current situation is already surreal as it is, but someone – and he stopped believing it was God a long time ago – still wants to keep the necessary elements to make his existence a cheap novel about death and star-crossed lovers. His is wistful thinking, he knows, Noah may be just a pile of bones dumped over some unfathomable line, but he's not stupid. Gansey looks at Blue like Ronan looks at Gansey, like Noah looks at Gansey, like everyone, Adam included, at some point in their life or absence of it, looked at Gansey.

Richard – and it's still so strange to think of Gansey as anything but _Gansey_ – is the bright communion of life and life in death, of warm leather and rust. He looks as titanic as a Greek god statue, the nights that found him sleepless seemed to recognize him as such, and didn't leave a single trace of unrest on his sun-tanned skin. It was almost impossible not to fall a little bit in love with him, Noah reflects bitterly, and if before he had at least the possibility of hoping – or whatever it was what he did while he pretended to be asleep – about holding his hand like it meant something, now, with Blue and the saddening ordeal of being dead, all it's left to him are his memories.

He remembers another time, another place, another face. Whelk had the same aura Gansey has, he was more dark and tall, as tight as a violin string. His nose was prominent and his lips thin like the latin papers he used to write, his calligraphy neat just like him. Sometimes, Noah loses himself in daydreaming, when his energy is too low to even try to appear, and the only thing he feels like doing is float on an endless stream of wrong recollections. He wonders, what if I didn't go with him, he thinks, what if he didn't kill me. A chaotic puddle of mud and frogs of questions and what ifs abruptly overwhelms him and he can't help but laugh at his life, and at his death, for falling in love with the same type of person over and over, cursed to feel too much for the wrong person every single time. 

Noah feels stupid all of a sudden, he doesn't blame Whelk anymore, seven years is a long time and he learnt the virtue of forgiveness somewhere along the fifth, because he didn't want to stay stuck in Henrietta for longer than necessary, but something inside him is still searching for the thing he never quite got when he was alive, and he doubts he will get now.

The rumble of The Pig outside breaks his grim mood, and the sight of a joyful Richard greets him from the just now opened door.

“Oh, hello my dear Noah” cheers the other boy, surprisingly alone and delighted to see him.

Noah smiles, a lopsided, subdued thing that looks like a crack in a mirror. His eyes follows Gansey as he drops his bag, and then his body on an old chair, that has seen better days for sure, but fits perfectly with the_ it's not “homeless”, Ronan, it's vintage _look he seems to be going for.

“Hello,” is the feeble greeting Noah can manage, sounding like a lonely clarinet in the whole orchestra that is Gansey's life. “You seem in high spirits.”

“Do I?” he asks, as he opens a yellow and sad looking tome.

“Well, I know a thing or two about spirits” Noah jokes, but he quickly looses his mirth as the look on Gansey's face becomes more serious and less carefree. He suddenly feels like he's just been slapped in the face by his own hand.

“I was joking” he says, even though it's hardly the first time he jokes about being dead and Gansey is not as thick and obtuse as he often seems around Blue.

The boy raises his eyes and for the first time that afternoon, he actually looks at Noah like he's seeing him and not through him; carefully, like a new born deer trying to walk, his smile comes back and lights up his face, Noah the ship and Gansey's straight teeth the lighthouse that steer him through the stormy sea. _God, what am I thinking_, he says to himself. He adjust his body on the sofa, trying not to sound like the protagonist of a Jane Austen's novel and missing the final step of the transformation happening on the other person's face.

“You know, I found out an interesting thing today” states Gansey, and without waiting for confirmation on whether Noah is listening or not, he continues “did you know your name means _rest_?” he folds his hands on his lap and hooks his leg over the other, looking like the king who rules over Noah's heart.

“Figures” is the humourless response, and he can't even manage to appreciate the irony of the fact that, apparently, dead jokes are okay as long as he's the only one who doesn't make them, that Gansey continues.

“Also, that Czerny is also the name of an Austrian pianist.” he finishes on a lighter note. And Noah can't help, on the spur of the moment, but wonder why he knows that his family name is Austrian, or that it means rest and quiet and every single one of the metaphors you can use to say someone's dead.

“I was, uhm... doing some research, you know? And it's incredibly interesting, the way genealogy works, with the merging of two worlds, the humanistic and the scientific one! Truly fascinating” he rambles on, and he keeps talking for a while, but Noah's stopped listening the moment he realised that Gansey was doing research on him, and he thinks _this_ is interesting and fascinating, so he asks.

“Why were you searching my family history? - and because, again, he's not stupid, he adds – it's not like Henrietta is that big, surely Aglionby has all my records, relatives included.” he feels like he's taking away a toy from a child, with the way he's trying to rationalise one of his friends being interested in him. He should've figured before that his reluctance on talking about Whelk would have brought Gansey to take matters into his own hands.

“Ah, well, yes. That's true” he stutters, “but I kind of have gotten sidetracked...” he seems bashful, as if Noah's the strict professor who's reprimanding one of his scholars.

“It's just that, Noah, we know so little about you. One gets curious about his friends, you know?”

Noah smiles, because his crush on Gansey is as dead as he is, and it's not a bad feeling to acknowledge it, it's not so horrid to recognize the fact that he still _feels_ in the first place. And, he figures, if Ronan was able to get over him, there is no universe, no plane of existence, in which he is not able to do the same.

He moves, takes another seat, one nearer the old chair Gansey is occupying, with his presence that is almost as suffocating as the summer sun, and says “Ask away”, with all the sincerity he can muster.  
A small gasp leaves his mouth, as the very much alive boy before him proceeds to ask one and a million questions. Noah doesn't mind, at all.  


****

**La Follia.**

Blue is someone he never would have thought of loving. Noah loves her in a way he thinks is more genuine, less wanted by fate and more aleatory. As she became a clearer presence in his life, the distinct lines he drew between romanticism and affection became dimmer and blurred, until they mixed together and he realised that not everything is a dichotomy. The act of loving Blue, loving her cheeky personality, with her idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, found a place in Noah's whole being, until it reached a point in which he wasn't able to discern where his feelings started and where they finished.

She was whole where he was divided, warm where he was cold. She liked to hold his hand and kiss his temples like his mother never did. Noah doesn't remember his mother, her faces superimposes with Blue's and he doesn't know what to do. Blue is, quite obviously, not his mother, but he can't help the tepid feeling that spreads through him the moment he sees her. In those moments, he understands why Adam looked at her like that, how Gansey is currently looking. It all comes down to their eyes, and the fact that Noah's eye socket has been smashed with his board seven years ago, and he can't _for the love of God_ remember why. The others are very understanding, they can't imagine what it feels like, but everyone has their secrets, and he feels almost left out, now that everyone knows he's dead. He's the one without secrets, without lockets that need keys and passwords and fingerprints to be opened.

Then, he rethinks, Blue doesn't have secrets, either, at least none that matter. He smiles, as he plucks grass with his ever cold fingers. He's waiting outside Fox Way, for Blue and Adam and their precarious relationship that, he thinks, is destined to not work out. Noah has had a lot of time, lately, to think about the dynamics in their friendships, and while, from the point of view of an outsider – assuming that said outsider could see him – they could appear as a grey miasma of love and hate and everything in between, the sight from the inside is drastically different; they have their roles, a disorganised and wild tidiness, just like the ley line feels. Everyone but Gansey thinks of him as their leader, King Arthur to their round table. And if Gansey is Arthur, then Adam is Lancelot, and Ronan is Merlin and Blue, dear and fierce Blue, who would absolutely hate this role, is Guinevere. Noah, and the endless time of eternity in his very finished, very cold, hands, finds great amusement in imagining Ronan with a long, white beard. He quickly loses his smiles when he finds out he can't create a place for himself. It happens more frequently as of late, especially when he's alone and bored, his thoughts start taking roads he's not meant to wander. He doesn't even remember how he came to think about Camelot and its inhabitants. Absent-mindedly, he remembers something Ronan said, about memories being like dreams, and he reckons the boy should know a thing or two about dreams, so he believes him.

He doesn't hear the footsteps, nor does he feel the gush of the wind as Blue sits next to him.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks gently, she must've caught the dreary mood Noah's in, because her voice – usually trilling and loud, the voice of someone that lives in a house with many other voices as loud as hers – is but a whisper.

“Kings and queens” he answers, because it's true, he dislikes lying to Blue. It feels wrong.

“What about them?” Blue continues, she quietly takes the hand he's using to pluck the grass and puts it in her lap. It's a tiny gesture, one affectionate people do without thinking about it, and Noah likes to think of himself as caring, the type of person who gives hugs and kisses away like they mean nothing and everything, but the tenderness with which Blue is holding his hand makes him want to cry.

“Nothing, really. It was silly, not the thinking about kings and queens Gansey usually does.”

At the mention of the other boy, Blue seems to lose her concentration, the movement of her hand over his faltering, and if Noah hadn't been looking so carefully at her face he would have missed the raised eyebrows and the scrunch of her nose. Noah stills, too, even if he wasn't moving in the first place and cranes his neck to make eye contact with Blue.

“Cool, don't you think it's a bit heteronormative, though?”

“What, Gansey?” at that Blue snorts.

“Him, too. But I mean the whole _we must divide the world into male and female _type of deal.” she looks down at his hand, and begins tracing the lines of his palm.

“Yes, it is. Humans are keen on dividing the world into categories, it seems.” as he's saying these words, Noah realises several things: first, he's also fond of finding the right category for everything and everyone. Second, he doesn't really think of himself as a human anymore.

Blue seems to consider his statement, her middle finger is tracing circles on the centre of his hand and he swears, it almost tickles. Her face is concentrated, tiny lines appear on the part of her forehead that's not covered by the mass of her curly hair, and Noah feels her heartbeat slow down, the imaginary cogs in her brain rolling and working. It's comical, really, thinking of several tiny Blues running through her head, as if Blue wasn't already so much more tinier than he is. His hand closes around hers, engulfing it like he was Scylla and she was Odysseus's ship.

“You're right – she admitted – now that I think of it, it seems rather pointless.” her hand is small and warm, strong, the direct antonym of his. Noah closes his eyes, tightens his grip and exhales. Blue is so perfectly human it scares him, in a way he doesn't think he's ever been scared. 

Blue is flawed, she gets angry too easily and she treats anyone she doesn't like with disregard. She rarely admits she's wrong and she's unhealthily addicted to yogurt. She's not a dichotomy, she's a whole universe of hendyadis and he's so afraid of losing her that he never wants to let go of this cruel world.

“Is everything alright? You're really quiet.” because Blue may not be a seer or a psychic or whatever it is that her relatives are, but she's so dreadfully observant it's honestly a miracle she didn't recognize him as a ghost the first time she met him.

He nods, because he's alright and he hates lying to Blue, because it feels wrong,

“Did you know that my name means quiet”, he tells her, in place of whatever explanation she was waiting for.

“No, I didn't, but it's fitting. Wasn't Noah the one with the ark? In the Bible, I mean.” her hand feels heavier in his.

“Yes, t'was him.” he slurs. He feels sleepy, like he often does lately when Blue's around. He opens and closes his eyes quickly, looks at her and feels a little more human, a little less something else. She often insists she's not like her mum, not magical, just cursed, but Noah can't disagree more. Blue's so special to him, able to enter the empty cavity of his chest and find a place there, like a dragon hoarding its gold, except that instead of gold she's sleeping on love. Love so tender all-encompassing it feels like he might die a second time. He never felt so alive. 

****

**Étude.**

Adam and him had been friends, close and tight. If Noah was a smudge of ink, Adam was a stain of grease. If they had met when Noah was still alive they probably wouldn't have been as close, he squints his eyes – again – as Adam tries, rather unsuccessfully, to fix The Pig's engine. It's a lost cause, he knows it, Adam knows it, even Gansey, deep down, knows it. But Adam's stubborn, always has been, and once he puts his mind to something he gets that task completed, and in a much more efficient and proficient way. It's not his fault, that Adam scares him.

Not the way Blue does, with the unsettling grandness of her feelings, or the way sometimes Ronan does when he's simply being _too Ronan_. It's in the way the tired shadows of his face settle sometimes, or how Adam just is at the same time a very simple boy and a very complicated orphic forest. He rethinks of his habit of dividing the world into categories and understands that with Adam you simply cannot find a box in which he fits.

He's larger than Gansey, even, with his blue eyes and the indefinite blonde of his hair. Adam is his own category of special, his contradictions, his jerky reactions and the mellifluous movements of his hands, that are as big as his own. Noah looks at the sliver of golden skin slipping through the curtains of his worn-out shirt and wonders. He keeps wondering, like it's the only active thing he can do without feeling the energy he's borrowing from the ley line flickering again. As their research continues, he feels the connection waver from time to time, and he's so scared. So scared of Adam and his dark eyes, of Gansey and his possibile-second-death, of Ronan and of the guy he's been seeing lately, of Blue and her curse. He's tired of always performing the same specific actions meant to bring peace to someone who doesn't exist anymore, who probably has never existed in the first place.

“Can you pass me that wrench?” Adam's request comes abruptly, and he shakes for a moment. He takes the wrench out of the tool box and passes it without complain, brushing Adam's hand in the process.

He's also very tired of being the cold one. Tired of feeling like an empty shell  
  
“Thanks” says Adam, and his accent is thick, the drawl he so carefully tries to hide everytime he talks with someone so very real Noah thinks he ought to make Adam talk more. 

They are alone, their shared silences are never heavy and hard, they're not this monstrous thing, and it's a nice change of pace, not being afraid of something for once in his life. Silences with Adam are the slumberous repetition of sea tides, an aristocratic guitar riff made on plastic strings. He likes them, finds – finally – his place in the idle quarter note pause between Adam's lungs and his throat.

“I literally do not understand why Gansey keeps this piece of junk, it's not like he lacks the money...” mumbles Adam, and Noah knows it's not directed at him, it's not even a rhetorical question, because he knows the boy genuinely wonders why Gansey is so keen on keeping a death-machine, but he answers nonetheless.

“'Cause it keeps you busy.”

Adam stops midway, cranes his neck and looks at him like he just grew a second head.

“Keeps me busy? As if I haven't got enough to do, already.” he huffs, his uneven hair is sticking in so many directions it seems he styled it like that on purpose.

“Yes, when he's out there researching with Blue.” he has a sardonic smile on his face, paradoxically, Noah feels as if Ronan is the ghost and he's being possessed by him. It's not like him to act like this.

Adam smiles ruefully, his relationship with Blue is still somewhat of an open wound, even though Ronan keeps insisting that it's not open at all and Adam just finds solace in suffering.

“I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that.” he admits, because they are friends and they understand the meaningfulness of silences and their immaculate shape. Adam shakes his head, puts down the cloth he had in his other hand and looks at Noah with an expression so tired he wants to vanish and repent for the rest of his life.

“It's okay, I should've already got over it, right?”

Noah doesn't know what makes him move in the first place, he sometimes forget this form is corporeal too, and not just the smeared reflection of what he looked like, but he hugs Adam so tight he must have spooked him, because the boy gasps.

“Noah?” he asks, as his arms reach over his shoulders and pat him good-heartedly, albeit a bit awkwardly.

He takes a deep breath, even though he doesn't need it, even though he's the biggest coward on this earth and knows how difficult it is to accept that things do get better, eventually.

“You are allowed to be selfish, Adam.” and Adam stops moving altogether. He grabs Noah by his shoulders and keeps it at an arm-distance, his dark circles not so different than the black smudge over his cheek. His left eyebrow is crooked, and his mouth is twitching, like he wants to open it and let the words he so cautiously chooses punch him in the face, for once.

“Why're you saying this?”

“Nothing, just being honest.”

Adam breathes, Noah breathes, and the silence follows. The other boy smile is, finally, a genuine one.

“It's alright, you don't have to psychoanalyse me like Gansey does, Blue and I didn't work out, and I'm moping, that's all.”

“Nothing else?” Noah is not curious, he doesn't like to search for deeper causes or different meanings. He likes swimming on the surface, he doesn't need the French horns to play in the distance like some other pretentious people do, but the askew look Adam gives him in that moment provokes a surge of sympathy so strong he starts doubting he ever felt any other emotion.

“Yes, Noah, nothing else.” it might sound like Adam's coddling him, but Noah knows he's just trying to keep one more secret to himself. They're still holding each other, he notices, so he starts to disentangle his arms from the clumsy embrace when Adam stops him.

He ruffles his hair, like an older brother might do with his younger sibling, and it feels surreal because Noah's seven years older than Adam and he doesn't know what to do with the rush of blood he doesn't have to his heart which doesn't beat anymore. He recognizes Adam as the most stubborn person he knows, even compared to Ronan, but as a smile blooms on his face he also understand that Adam is just a boy, that his perpetual actions have an important meaning to him, and that Ronan's wrong: he doesn't like suffering, but it's the only thing he's ever known so far.

****

**Fuga.**

Noah's not too fond of some of Ronan's antics. He knows he's a _troubled_ boy, he understands, even, the appeal of alcohol and speed and dumb crows that scream the moment they sense him. The problem is he loves Ronan, too, as wholly as he loves Adam and Gansey, as deep as he loves Blue, and so he worries. 

He'd be the type Noah would find interesting, if he were alive, but he's not, and the excitement of throwing him out of the windows quickly wears out. Sometimes, he remembers a younger Whelk, a dusty _murdered_, his skateboard, and hates what Ronan has made of himself. He misses the brighter – he never seemed happy, always frowning and glaring at everything that moved – version of the other boy, the one that listened to obscure music and liked to steal shopping carts.

“Czerny.” greets him coolly, and Noah hates that, too. After discovering his last name, his secret, Ronan rarely refers to him as Noah. He's always Czerny, The smudgy one. He's always someone else, but Noah.

He wants to grab his head and chant his name, wear it out like a prayer. _Am I so forbidden that you can't talk about me_ he wants to scream. He never does, he loves Ronan too much, and at the same time he's scared he will stop talking to him if he ever got angry at him. It's not fair, because Ronan's always angry, almost as if he's a rage-only bottomless pit. Noah doesn't remember the last time he felt infuriated, not even when he thinks about Whelk – and it has been happening quite a lot, recently -.

“Lynch.” he answers, mocking him. Ronan raises one of his eyebrows, and he's so sharp Noah fears his skin might be cut open and all his dreams escape with him.

Ronan stops in the middle of the parking lot, looks around and Noah can pinpoint the moment the other realises Adam's with Gansey and Blue somewhere off the deep end.

“Miss 'em?”

“Fuck off” is the quick response, Ronan is much harsher lately, Noah sounds like a pouting child, but he misses his best friend.

“Why do you keep doing that?” he asks, exasperated. He doesn't need to breathe to know that Ronan smells of gasoline and store-bought liquor.

“Doing what?” he enters the BMW and Noah immediately appears in the passenger seat, looking like a moth under the neon lights.

Ever since he started feeling the ley line buzzing he's also started thinking more, he notices the details more easily, and he knows Ronan's always mad like a bull for the silliest of reasons, just because he genuinely doesn't know that he mustn't face everything alone like the stoic warrior he pretends to be. Because when his bullheaded personality fails him, he starts looking for unhealthy coping mechanism, and often ends up pissed in a church melancholically sighing like Jesus Christ's suffering is his own. Noah wants to slap him and tell him to take his head out of his ass, to just talk to Adam, because he really can't understand why they're both fine pretending their pining is unrequited. Noah doesn't like to sound like an old man, but he's dead, and the advice coming from the afterlife must have some sort of higher significance than the normal one.

“Gansey will get mad.” he says, because mentioning Gansey in Ronan-speach is like saying _I'm telling dad._ It doesn't stop Ronan from revving the engine, but The Pig suddenly entering the parking lot ultimately blocks the boy.

“Ronan! Were you leaving?” ask Gansey as he tries, and fails, to open the door to Blue's side. She rolls her eyes and jumps over it, muttering something about the patriarchy and how Gansey ought to do something about his medieval manners.

Noah looks at them and Ronan hesitates just a moment, like he's contemplating finally telling a lie, when he simply shrugs and turns off the car.

“Excellent! Adam and Blue have found out something while scrying, yes?” the two nod, and Ronan huffs.

“Fine, tell me.” he pockets his keys without locking his car, and Adam gives him a sideways glance. Noah intercept it and he shrugs, he feels like he's going to disappear soon, and each time he starts to wonder if there will be a time when he won't be able to reappear anymore.

He bites his bottom lip and stays behind with Ronan, for a moment. Noah reaches with his translucent hand the leather bands the other wears on his wrists and touches them gently, like he's touching Ronan's skin directly.

“I care about you, y'know?” he says. Because the threat of leaving without Ronan knowing this makes him want to vomit his empty stomach.

Something appears over Ronan's eyes, as if he understands the fear and pensive worrying Noah usually does. It disappears just as quickly, though, and the boy snorts.

“Okay, Czerny, don't get too mushy over me.” he shrugs the ghost off, but, surprising Noah, he throws his arm around his shoulders. He's so happy he disappears for a second.

“Don't go all flicker-y on me, now. Really making me feel self-conscious.”

Noah laughs free as a bird, and gently pushes them towards the entrance to Monmouth Manufacturing. He can't leave now, he thinks, when he loves his friends so profoundly it keeps him anchored to this reality. And he really wants to see Ronan grow into the happiest version of himself.  


****

**Coda.**

Noah Czerny has been a boy, a teenager, a student. He has been a friend, a lover, a sacrifice. Noah is the name of stillness, of music of silence and the smell of rotting flesh and rusting metal. The unsettling game of hows and whys has finally stopped, time and space haven't made sense since he was killed, now he understands there's no time, no space, there just is.

He's the ghost of someone whom he doesn't remember anymore. He has been murdered. And, finally, he's being remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> Here are my bold opinions and how I interpret Noah's character I accept criticism in the forms of doxxing and hate mail


End file.
